The Motorola Electrify ($199.99), the company's version of the Photon 4G ($249.99, 4.5 stars) for U.S. Cellular, is a powerful, top-notch Android smartphone. It's a welcome addition to the regional carrier's lineup, its first dual-core smartphone, and our new Editors' Choice for U.S. Cellular touch screen smartphones. It should also help prevent subscribers in U.S. Cellular's regional coverage area from switching to Verizon or AT&T in search of better devices.

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Design and Call QualityThe Electrify cuts an impressive profile, with distinctive chrome trim, angular edges, and a massive glass screen. It measures 5.0 by 2.6 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.6 ounces. The 4.3-inch, 540-by-960-pixel qHD capacitive touch screen looks rich and sharp; it's a PenTile display, which some people vehemently dislike, but I didn't mind it. In addition to playing videos and browsing the Web, the large screen has another benefit: Typing on the on-screen QWERTY keyboards is simple, in both portrait and landscape modes.

The Electrify is a dual-band EV-DO Rev. A (850/1900 MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi support. There's no 4G WiMAX support, unlike with the Photon, because U.S. Cellular's network tops out at 3G. Voice quality is excellent: crisp, clear, and loud, with a smooth, warm tone in the earpiece. Transmissions are also clear, and reception is average. Calls sounded fine through a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4 stars) and voice dialing worked well over Bluetooth.

The speakerphone sounds loud and full, if a tad harsh, and is fine for outdoor use in noisier environments. The massive 1700mAh battery was good for a solid 7 hours and 51 minutes of talk time.

Hardware, Apps, and AccessoriesAs is often the case with Android phones, the Electrify—and Photon 4G—are already no longer the top of the heap in terms of performance. That's fine, though; this thing is still fast, with its dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) performs smoothly, and you shouldn't have any problem running most of the 250,000+ third-party apps in Android Market, though dual-core-optimized programs are still rare. For enterprise customers, Motorola adds SSL encryption and remote device wipe in case the phone is lost or stolen.

The home screen is standard fare for Motorola, which means it's been fairly heavily modified but still recognizable as Android. You get five home screen panels that you can swipe between, and the handset feels smooth and fast. On the downside, there are lots of preloaded apps and bloatware. Some of it is good, including Amazon Kindle, Audible, IMDB, and Zappos. But between Motorola's custom UI layer, the extra apps, and the U.S. Cellular bloatware, Android purists may be a bit put off.

As with the Atrix 2, the Droid Bionic, and the Droid RAZR, the Electrify works as a Webtop using Motorola's desktop dock, as well as its new Lapdock 100 and Lapdock 500 (the original Lapdock didn't work with the Photon). Motorola is clearly bent on turning the Atrix idea into its own little ecosystem. Essentially, you can turn the Electrify into a miniature PC running Webtop Application, which is a custom version of Linux with Android in a virtual machine. It's all a bit geeky, and the resultant Webtop mode is sluggish, even when using the desktop Firefox browser. We love the convertible idea, but unless you're the bleeding edge hacking type, going with a separate netbook still makes more sense for now.

Multimedia, Camera, and ConclusionsYou won't lack for storage space with the Electrify: There's 2.65GB of free internal space for apps, 8.92GB free for multimedia files, and a memory card slot underneath the battery cover that accepts 32GB microSD cards; my 32GB SanDisk card worked fine. The standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack works with the tinny-sounding pair of included earbuds, as well as any number of aftermarket options. Music tracks sounded clear over Samsung Modus HM6450 Bluetooth headphones ($99, 4 stars). Motorola's music app pulls data from the Web, but it's more complicated to set up than Android's own music player. FLAC and OGG test files didn't work.

Standalone video files played smoothly in full screen mode, even 1080p files transcoded on the fly, including DivX and Xvid videos. The kickstand makes the Electrify a nifty bedside alarm clock or portable television, while the HDMI out port lets you pump 720p or 1080p video to an external HDTV.

The 8-megapixel auto-focus camera includes a dual-LED flash. That flash is useful; I got some impressive shots at dusk, both indoors and out, that less-powerful LED flashes can't handle. Dimmer indoor rooms were still a problem, though; most details washed out in a sea black, and the slow auto-focus didn't help matters. Sunny outdoor shots looked great, although a couple were out of focus even with the delay. Recoded 1280-by-720-pixel (720p) videos played smoothly and evenly at 30 frames per second, and looked fine overall; there's no 1080p option, though, which is bizarre considering the Droid Bionic has it. You also get a front-facing VGA camera for video chats.

If you live in U.S. Cellular's coverage area, the Electrify makes it even tougher to justify paying higher prices for one of the major national carriers. It takes the Editors' Choice crown from the Samsung Mesmerize ($199.99, 4.5 stars), which lacks the Electrify's dual-core processor and slightly larger screen, although the Mesmerize is still competitive otherwise. The HTC Merge ($199.99, 4 stars) is also a great option if you need a hardware QWERTY keyboard, or a world phone with both CDMA and GSM compatibility, although it's unusually heavy for a modern smartphone.

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Jamie Lendino is the Editor-In-Chief of ExtremeTech.com, and has written for PCMag.com and the print magazine since 2005. Recently, Jamie ran the consumer electronics and mobile teams at PCMag, and before that, he was the Editor In Chief of Smart Device Central, PCMag's dedicated smartphone site, for its entire three-year run from 2006 to 2009. Prior to PCMag, he was a contributing editor for Laptop and mediabistro.com. His writing has also appeared in the print editions of Popular Science, Electronic Musician, and Sound and Vision,...
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